


we'll lay here for years or for hours

by rainow



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, icb i mean idiots, self-indulgent ot3, uh clara can top me any day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 17:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15823824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainow/pseuds/rainow
Summary: clara oswald is above everything, brave.





	we'll lay here for years or for hours

**Author's Note:**

> au where the master ends up traveling w/ the 11th doctor and eventually they pick up clara oswald as their companion.

she’s not afraid of him, she’s just… wary.

where he lies nestled between her legs, bleached tufts tousled underneath her fingers as the back of his head rests against her stomach. she laughs with the doctor from time to time about it - maybe he’s drawn to her warmth like cats to sunspots, the way he curls up against her warm skin at the earliest convenience. glasses pushed up on the bridge of his nose, buried in a book written in a language that won’t translate for her.

there’s a pull in her chest and she takes a deep breath before smoothing down the soft hair and burying her face in it, a sigh and a gentle kiss against the base of his skull.

_read to me,_

there’s a low, questioning hum in response, she leans against his weary head tilting skywards just the slightest and she smiles because she knows how his eyes are trained just centimetres above the brim of his book, listening intently with pen in hand tentatively resting against the pages.

 _i want to know. what does it say?_ she says, brave-heart clara, bright and quick and _human_ clara.

 _it’s about him,_ the master tells her, broken and heavy against her small frame and lonesome heart. heavy where he bruises her skin so lovingly, heavy the ever-abiding presence of his jagged mind. it feels like the kind of static she would touch from the TV when she was young, reaching out with small hands to collect other worlds in her palms, except now it lingers, coiling around the corners of her being. sometimes she forgets it’s there, but then it’ll spike out and leave this stinging, hurtful aftertaste like blood and burning over her tongue and she can’t stop thinking about it even with his calloused hands pressed firmly against her shoulder blades and the doctor’s pinked lips so softly kissing the valley of her collarbone like she’s going to break.

she wonders if this is what it must be like to be loved by gods.

he sometimes asks her if she is okay with them, all of this, everything. she has a feeling that he doesn’t like leaving her alone with him for too long. he knows the master better than anyone and she knows that sometimes days pass where she doesn’t see him. she doesn’t push it. the doctor still runs until he’s so out of breath he can’t answer any questions, but maybe he holds her hand just a little tighter, just a little closer. she suspects he would burst and collapse if he ever stopped, soaring and beautiful like the death of a thousand stars.

_( clara, do you feel safe? he can be a bit, well, much. teensy bit homicidal. maniac at best. are you sure you aren’t... afraid?_

and she’s not, she’s not afraid. just wary. because for all the blood on his hands and worlds ground to dust in his wake, he sleeps with his arm covetously around her waist, the rise and fall of his chest in sync with hers. he smiles when his hand fists strands of the doctor’s dark hair, slowly and steadily guiding him down clara’s hips, her fragile body trembling beneath tongue and fleeting hands around parted legs, over her chest and entwined with her own as she cries out.

and, when she asks, he reads to her in a warmly lit room. old, ancient stories about long-gone faces and forgotten memories to all but them. )

if she was ever going to be afraid, it would be of the doctor. when close to him, she can feel this monumental, relentless pull. l’appel du vide, the master explains, his voice tired and gentle as he presses a kiss to her fingers. longing for the stars. longing for _him_. it tugs at her very core, this urge to run, the way he takes her hand in his, promises her the universe within jaded-green eyes. _does it ever… stop?_

 _no,_ he says. and she doesn’t push it.


End file.
